Time for some clarity on all this stuff about ambiguity
Wednesday, 25 July 2007
Stefan Stern
DO you mind if I make a rather embarrassing confession? I am not comfortable with ambiguity. This must explain why so few headhunters - well, none, actually - have been on to me in recent weeks about any of the senior positions that currently need filling.
Clearly, my mono-tasking mindset leaves me unambiguously disqualified for a seat at the top table.
But if I had a pound for every time a consultant or headhunter had told me in the past year that organisations need leaders who are "comfortable with ambiguity", well, I would not have to worry about cranking up my salary to executive-level proportions.
What does everybody mean when they talk about "ambiguity" in this way? I suppose it is just the latest attempt to try and describe the fast-changing, globalising world. Last year the business community's cliché of preference seemed to be "visibility", as in the phrase, "We lack visibility going forward". This was thought to be a less scary way of saying, "We haven't got a clue what's going on right now, and as for a few months down the road, forget it".
Managers face ambiguity all the time: as they enter new markets, as they work with diverse colleagues, customers and suppliers, as they grapple with new legislation and as they track economic and geopolitical trends. Exactly how "comfortable" anyone could or should ever be when faced with this combination of circumstances is debatable.
Even the meaning of ambiguity itself can be, you guessed it, ambiguous. In 1930 the poet and literary critic William Empson published his Seven Types of Ambiguity, an exploration of the richness of language and its potential to convey and obscure meaning.
Empson is perhaps our best guide to the subject. As he explains: "Ambiguity . . . can mean an indecision as to what you mean, an intention to mean several things, a probability that one or other or both of two things has been meant, and the fact that a statement has several meanings." I trust this clears it all up for you.
"Ambiguity" can also be seen as a different way of referring to that other fashionable concept in business: complexity. In the 1990s it became trendy to talk about organisations as "complex adaptive systems". The idea was based on the belief that companies formed a kind of living ecosystem and, as in nature, adaptation offered the route to survival. We needed to lose our hang-ups about control and trying to achieve "linear" results, and instead embrace the crazy, chaotic world of "non-linearity".
Having once spent some time myself working for an organisation that believed it had embraced complexity, I have to say that results there were mixed. We certainly created more than our fair share of chaos. But our performance was ultimately pretty linear - and not necessarily in the direction that you would have hoped.
Can the clever people at McKinsey help us out with this one? Three of their consultants have just published a paper called "Cracking the complexity code" in the latest edition of the firm's quarterly journal. In it the authors try to make the case for complexity. It can bring competitive advantage, they claim. "Companies that understand this concept will create more value than their rivals, become more resilient and make it harder for others to replicate what they are doing."
And what do you need to do to produce this happy outcome? Make sure that "flexibility and adaptive qualities are embedded throughout the organisation", and see to it that you have "highly capable people in most roles". That shouldn't be too difficult, then.
It seems to me that successful organisations do all they can to drive out complexity and ambiguity. They keep things simple, or as simple as they can be. Even though the supermarket chain Tesco now has more than 350,000 employees worldwide, there are still only six layers of management between Sir Terry Leahy, chief executive, and the person on the check-out. And while the company's shelf-stackers may not be able to draw you a nice little map of the twin forces of individual and institutional complexity, as described in the McKinsey article, they will probably be able to tell you that their prime concern is to listen to their customers and give them what they want.
At a recent breakfast seminar in London run by CHA, the communications consultancy, a roomful of senior managers agreed that while it was all very well having leaders who were "comfortable with ambiguity", lower down the organisation you often found over-stretched middle managers and beneath them a confused and bewildered workforce. Leaders need to offer an easily understandable view of the world and describe their employees' place in that world in clear and simple terms.
I shall struggle on, uncomfortably, through the dark forests of ambiguity. But at least I am in good company. Recently Richard Baker, the chief executive of Alliance Boots, resigned as he did not want to remain chief executive reporting to an "executive chairman".
Looks like he had a problem with ambiguity that no amount of over-the-counter pharmaceutical products could ever have solved.
FT Syndication Service
DO you mind if I make a rather embarrassing confession? I am not comfortable with ambiguity. This must explain why so few headhunters - well, none, actually - have been on to me in recent weeks about any of the senior positions that currently need filling.
Clearly, my mono-tasking mindset leaves me unambiguously disqualified for a seat at the top table.
But if I had a pound for every time a consultant or headhunter had told me in the past year that organisations need leaders who are "comfortable with ambiguity", well, I would not have to worry about cranking up my salary to executive-level proportions.
What does everybody mean when they talk about "ambiguity" in this way? I suppose it is just the latest attempt to try and describe the fast-changing, globalising world. Last year the business community's cliché of preference seemed to be "visibility", as in the phrase, "We lack visibility going forward". This was thought to be a less scary way of saying, "We haven't got a clue what's going on right now, and as for a few months down the road, forget it".
Managers face ambiguity all the time: as they enter new markets, as they work with diverse colleagues, customers and suppliers, as they grapple with new legislation and as they track economic and geopolitical trends. Exactly how "comfortable" anyone could or should ever be when faced with this combination of circumstances is debatable.
Even the meaning of ambiguity itself can be, you guessed it, ambiguous. In 1930 the poet and literary critic William Empson published his Seven Types of Ambiguity, an exploration of the richness of language and its potential to convey and obscure meaning.
Empson is perhaps our best guide to the subject. As he explains: "Ambiguity . . . can mean an indecision as to what you mean, an intention to mean several things, a probability that one or other or both of two things has been meant, and the fact that a statement has several meanings." I trust this clears it all up for you.
"Ambiguity" can also be seen as a different way of referring to that other fashionable concept in business: complexity. In the 1990s it became trendy to talk about organisations as "complex adaptive systems". The idea was based on the belief that companies formed a kind of living ecosystem and, as in nature, adaptation offered the route to survival. We needed to lose our hang-ups about control and trying to achieve "linear" results, and instead embrace the crazy, chaotic world of "non-linearity".
Having once spent some time myself working for an organisation that believed it had embraced complexity, I have to say that results there were mixed. We certainly created more than our fair share of chaos. But our performance was ultimately pretty linear - and not necessarily in the direction that you would have hoped.
Can the clever people at McKinsey help us out with this one? Three of their consultants have just published a paper called "Cracking the complexity code" in the latest edition of the firm's quarterly journal. In it the authors try to make the case for complexity. It can bring competitive advantage, they claim. "Companies that understand this concept will create more value than their rivals, become more resilient and make it harder for others to replicate what they are doing."
And what do you need to do to produce this happy outcome? Make sure that "flexibility and adaptive qualities are embedded throughout the organisation", and see to it that you have "highly capable people in most roles". That shouldn't be too difficult, then.
It seems to me that successful organisations do all they can to drive out complexity and ambiguity. They keep things simple, or as simple as they can be. Even though the supermarket chain Tesco now has more than 350,000 employees worldwide, there are still only six layers of management between Sir Terry Leahy, chief executive, and the person on the check-out. And while the company's shelf-stackers may not be able to draw you a nice little map of the twin forces of individual and institutional complexity, as described in the McKinsey article, they will probably be able to tell you that their prime concern is to listen to their customers and give them what they want.
At a recent breakfast seminar in London run by CHA, the communications consultancy, a roomful of senior managers agreed that while it was all very well having leaders who were "comfortable with ambiguity", lower down the organisation you often found over-stretched middle managers and beneath them a confused and bewildered workforce. Leaders need to offer an easily understandable view of the world and describe their employees' place in that world in clear and simple terms.
I shall struggle on, uncomfortably, through the dark forests of ambiguity. But at least I am in good company. Recently Richard Baker, the chief executive of Alliance Boots, resigned as he did not want to remain chief executive reporting to an "executive chairman".
Looks like he had a problem with ambiguity that no amount of over-the-counter pharmaceutical products could ever have solved.
FT Syndication Service